


Little, Red

by AconitumNapellus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Cynophobia, Drugs, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Phobias, Red Riding Hood Elements, Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 04:06:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14729636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Illya, Napoleon, and April Dancer are snowbound in a forest in Eastern Europe. Their mission is to deliver a sample of bacteria to a scientist to prevent crop failure in that region of the world. Illya strikes out alone, and is forced to confront his greatest fear.TW for cynophobia/fear of dogs. Rated mature purely because of drug effects and dog attack.This is a thank you to all the Cousins who helped my husband's fundraiser. More will be in the works.





	1. Chapter 1

Illya pressed his forehead to the window of the small wooden house, looking up drearily at what he could see of the clouded sky through snowflakes and branches. The snow had been falling for days. The world was striped, black with slim tree trunks that had been soaked and chilled and stripped of leaves for months, and as white as light could be on ever-varying snow. They had skied for ten miles before they had come across this gingerbread house of a holiday cabin, and although it was blessedly well-stocked, there wasn’t a book in the whole place. Plenty of food, thank god, but no books, and he had got tired of Napoleon offering to recite Edgar Allen Poe every evening.

‘I’m going stir crazy,’ he muttered. ‘Absolutely stir crazy. It’s been blizzarding for – what, three days now?’

There was a light laugh from the other side of the room, and he turned to lean against the window, folding his arms over his chest and regarding April Dancer. She was dressed warmly in white and red knitwear and lounging by the fire, looking more like someone enjoying  _ après-ski  _ than an agent on a mission. She leant forward to throw another log on the fire, then settled back in her chair. At least there was plenty of wood around. Today Napoleon had volunteered again to go out and cut branches. He was becoming quite the woodsman.

‘Illya, didn’t you grow up in Russia?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you used to snow?’

‘I grew up in Ukraine,’ he corrected her. ‘In an apartment block in Kyiv. Getting used to snow doesn’t always enamour you to it, and I wasn’t exactly surrounded by trees.’

‘Oh, well...’ She pouted a little, then poked the chair opposite hers with her foot. ‘Why don’t you come sit down, darling? There isn’t anything we can do until this weather lets up.’

‘Greta Müller is  _ waiting  _ for that delivery of the bacteria,’ Illya insisted. ‘It’s  _ necessary _ , April. She can’t continue her work without it, and without it next year’s wheat harvest will be poisoned before it even sprouts out of the ground. You know what’ll happen if Thrush get hold of the bacteria first. They’ll be able to hold this part of the world to ransom.’

There was a little itching of panic in his chest that wasn’t entirely his. The fear of seeing crops fail had been handed down from his mother and his grandmother. The fear of running out of food, on the other hand, was all his own. Wartime Kyiv hadn’t been an easy place for a growing child. He had grown up to the refrain of his mother’s terror that they would all starve under the German occupation, and her fear had been well-grounded. He knew what hunger felt like.

‘I don’t really understand why scientists have to be so antisocial as to live way out in a place like this,’ April shrugged. ‘Couldn’t she live in a city somewhere? She’s a grandmother, for goodness sake. Doesn’t she want to be near to her family?’

Illya growled, looking up into the dull, heavy clouds. ‘I completely understand the desire for peace and quiet when one is undertaking research,’ he muttered.

‘That’s because you’re antisocial too, dear,’ April reminded him. ‘Really, Illya, is the thing that important? Can’t it wait until spring?’

‘It can barely wait until tomorrow. She  _ needs _ it, April,’ Illya insisted. He felt like scratching through the window pane and jumping out over the sill. ‘And someone has to get it to her.’

‘Illya,’ April said dangerously, stiffening now in the chair. ‘No one can go anywhere until this weather lets up. Why don’t you just sit down and have some cocoa? We can discuss strategy when Napoleon gets back with the wood. Up until then – well – why don’t we discuss more pleasant things?’

Illya grunted. He knew that April’s flirting was nothing but a front. They were friends, and neither had any desire for more.

‘No, it’s no good,’ Illya said, suddenly making up his mind. ‘ _ Somebody _ has to do something. I’m making that delivery. Thousands will starve if it doesn’t get through.’

He stalked over to the pegs by the door and took down a pair of insulated trousers and his pillar box red winter jacket.

‘Tell Napoleon where I’ve gone,’ he said, crossing the room again for gloves and muffler.

‘Illya, Napoleon ordered us to stay here until the snow let up!’

‘Yes, and then he went out logging,’ Illya said darkly. He knew they needed fuel, but he felt more than a little peeved at Napoleon’s sudden craze for logging. He would have quite liked the chance of some vigorous physical exercise himself, and there was only one axe. ‘I think the snow’s light enough to make the trip viable, and it needs doing now. April, I have plenty of experience of this kind of weather and terrain.’

‘In Kiev? You just told me – ’ April began sceptically.

He shook his head impatiently. ‘No, not in Kyiv. I’ve been around, April.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I’m cold-weather certified, I promise you.’

‘Well – do you want me to come?’ April asked, putting down her mug.

What he wanted was a little time alone, in peace and quiet.

‘I want you to stay here and keep the fire burning,’ Illya told her firmly. ‘If all goes well I shouldn’t be more than a few hours.’

April sighed and put her feet back up on the little coffee table near the fire. Illya glanced over at her. She really was a quite attractive woman, if one liked that sort of thing. He sensed that it irked her that she couldn’t use her seductive charms on him as well as on Napoleon.

‘Really, darling, I should be sending you out with a basket of cakes,’ April said ruefully as he pulled on his coat over layers of jumpers.

Illya stared at her, pulling the fur-lined hood up over his head. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, with that red coat and hood.’ She regarded him curiously. ‘Illya, have you never heard Little Red Riding Hood?’

He stood for a moment just arranging the rim of fur about his face. ‘We have quite different tales in Russia.’

April sighed. ‘Well, when you get back maybe you can sit on my knee and I’ll tell it to you.’

‘Hmm,’ Illya said, although the idea, minus the sitting on April’s knee, was quite good. Recounting fairy tales would be a break from Napoleon intoning, ‘Quoth the raven, Nevermore,’ and then asking Illya to recite Masefield. ‘Tell Napoleon when he comes back that I’m making an attempt,’ he said succinctly. ‘When he argues that I should not have gone, remind him that this sample is perishable and that  _ I  _ am the cold weather specialist. If the snow remains this light I should be there and back within daylight hours.’

‘And if you’re not?’ she asked, raising both eyebrows.

‘If I am not, I will have stayed with Dr Müller overnight, and I’ll return as soon as possible.’

April pouted a little. ‘I’ll tell him, darling, but keep one ear out for his call, because it’s bound to come.’

‘Hmm,’ Illya said, intent on packing the few things he thought would be needed in his backpack, including the all-important sample. ‘He may call me. I’ll tell him what I told you.’

‘For god’s sake, don’t say  _ I may be some time  _ just before you walk into the snow,’ April begged him.

Illya shrugged. He understood that reference too. ‘Well, I may be.’

He made sure his light, slim rifle was in good working order and that he had spare cartridges. He double-checked his zips and fastenings, and then he grabbed his skis and went to the door. A moment before he opened it he turned to April and said with a sudden, flashing smile, ‘I’m perfectly conversant with Little Red Riding Hood, by the way. In fact, my class performed an adaptation of  _ Красная шапочка _ one year. I think I was twelve. I played the wolf.’

‘You  _ would _ ,’ April said darkly.

Outside the air was cuttingly cold. Illya’s breath blossomed around him in frozen clouds every time he exhaled. And it was quiet, so quiet. When he stood still he fancied he could hear the snowflakes falling and the tree branches creaking under the weight of snow. Somewhere off in the distance the sound of Napoleon’s axe occasionally broke the silence. It was a good noise, a solid, ringing noise, and Illya found it extremely satisfying.

He shrugged his backpack more solidly onto his back, pulled the muffler up over his mouth, and stamped his boots down into the grips on the long cross-country skis. Picking up his poles from where they leant against the wall of the cabin, he started out across the drifting snow. April waved him goodbye through the window, and after he gave her a brief salute he put her out of his mind.

There. There was something immensely pleasing about the swift, steady push across the surface of the fallen snow, leaving two perfect tracks behind him, snow swirling down in front of him, behind him, above him.

He gave a moment to wonder if he were being entirely sensible. After all, it was impossible to tell whether the snow was going to get heavier. But he had spoken the truth to April. It was imperative to get that bacteria sample to Dr Müller. She needed to start her work now if there was any hope of saving the new year’s crops. It was ridiculous to be stopped so close to their goal.

Left, right, left, right. He moved on in an easy, swinging motion through the forest, idly examining the trees as he passed them. A lot of beech and elm. Some oaks, venerable and craggy against the slimmer trunks of beech. This place must be beautiful in the summer. It was beautiful enough in the winter, a veritable fairy tale. He saw the tracks and scat of rabbits, foxes, deer, and numerous small rodents. And larger tracks there. He stopped for a moment to look more closely. Yes, those were wolf tracks.

He gave a small grunt, grateful for the U.N.C.L.E. special in his pocket and the rifle slung over his back. He hadn’t realised there were still wolves in this part of the world.

Another long exhale surrounded him with pearly clouded breath, and he pushed on through the frozen vapour, glancing up at the sky. He could look at his watch, but it was much easier to judge the time by the quality of the light, and he thought it was about midday. He checked his compass to confirm his bearing, and carried on.

Half an hour later he came across a grisly sight in the snow; the curving, bloody spine of what might have been a deer, shreds of flesh hanging from it, and other small bones scattered around it in the snow. That disturbed him. It was unlikely that would be left behind by a hungry animal, so whatever had killed the deer was probably close by, waiting for the human intrusion to move on. Illya had no problem with moving on, but he looked around cautiously before he did. He saw nothing.

The snow was thickening now, and he was checking his compass more often, because it would be so easy to lose his bearings. The work of propelling himself over the almost level ground was enough to keep him warm, but every time he stopped he realised just how cold his fingertips and face were. Every now and then he had to drop the muffler from his face and crack off the ice. He reminded himself again that the bacteria needed delivering, and that between him, April, and Napoleon, he was the most qualified to do so. There was no need for them to risk themselves in this cold.

April had said that Napoleon would call him, and she wasn’t wrong. He had been travelling for about an hour and a half when his communicator trilled, and he stopped to answer it, cursing under his breath as he was forced to pull of his glove to assemble the thing properly.

‘Illya, what the hell are you doing?’ Napoleon asked before Illya could speak.

‘I am delivering Dr Müller’s sample, as per our orders,’ Illya said smoothly.

‘ _ Alone? _ ’ Napoleon’s voice was incredulous. ‘There was nothing in our orders about it being a solo mission.’

‘There was absolutely no need for all three of us to make the final leg,’ Illya replied, keeping very calm in response to Napoleon’s obvious frustration. ‘I’m the cold weather expert. You were busy. I elected myself.’

‘And here I was thinking  _ I _ was the CEA,’ Napoleon growled.

Illya shoved the communicator in his pocket, leaving the microphone just sticking out, and pushed with his poles again. There was no sense wasting time standing still chatting. He didn’t want to risk getting that cold.

‘When the CEA is out of contact the decisions fall to me,’ Illya said reasonably.

‘I wasn’t out of contact! I’m cutting wood!’

‘Well, maybe you didn’t hear the communicator,’ Illya said.

‘Illya, April  _ told _ me you didn’t try to call,’ Napoleon replied darkly. ‘I heard the communicator easily enough when  _ she  _ called me.’

‘Napoleon, is there really any point in this?’ Illya asked, starting to feel a little peeved. He checked his compass again and altered his heading slightly to the north. ‘I’m delivering the sample. I’m over halfway to Dr Müller’s place. I’ll be back by dinner time, weather allowing. And then when the weather breaks sufficiently we can all get out of here.’

_ And I won’t have to listen to another word of Edgar Allen Poe _ , he thought to himself, not that he would say that to Napoleon.

‘Well,’ Napoleon said. There was silence for a moment, and all Illya could hear was the faint crackling of the communicator behind the louder swish of his skis, the crunch of the snow, and the occasional stirring of the forest branches. ‘Well, take care, comrade,’ Napoleon said eventually. ‘I don’t want to have to come out after you.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll have fun with Miss Dancer,’ Illya said rather darkly.

Cutting the connection, he recapped the communicator and pushed it back all the way into his pocket. It was pleasant forging through the snow like this, despite the cold. The quiet was something he rarely got to experience. Even when he was home in his small New York apartment, sounds pushed in from outside. In U.N.C.L.E. HQ noises filtered into his and Napoleon’s small office, and of course if Napoleon was in he would chatter. Although Illya was always pleased to be in Napoleon’s company, sometimes he did wish he would just  _ shut up _ . When Napoleon was in a quiet mood, that always seemed to be when Illya was fired up over some new research or information, and really wanted to talk.

He recalled sitting in the stacks in various libraries in Cambridge and Paris. They were inevitably cool, dim, quiet places, often with a slight smell of mildew to characterise them. Sometimes there would be the slight squeak or rumble as the shelves were rolled apart or back together, the clatter of a footstep on a floor, or the sound of pages being turned. But mostly they were  _ quiet _ , blessedly quiet. At times he went down to the U.N.C.L.E. stacks, which were housed in a small room, but conjured good memories for him. Also, it was almost inevitable that Napoleon didn’t make his way down there, unless there was a new librarian who was particularly good looking.

He smiled.  _ Ahh, Napoleon _ . Sometimes he thought his American partner was insane. Wonderful, but insane. Napoleon had a kind of manic brilliance to him at all times. He practically glittered with it. Given the chance, Napoleon would do absolutely anything, with no shame.

He thought about Napoleon in Paris that time, the affair with that trainee opera singer and the diamonds in the furniture, and that terrible old babushka who had forced him to dance with her for hours. He had danced almost happily with her because it gave him a chance to converse in Russian. Napoleon had thought nothing of dressing as a French detective, had thought nothing of their brazen display outside Van Schreeten’s window and their charade inside, had thought nothing of stealing his name from Victor Hugo; and of course Van Schreeten hadn’t noticed that little cultural theft. Once they were out and safely away Napoleon had leant against a wall and laughed so hard that tears came into his eyes. He had been alive and glittering, like a man on top of the world. That had been a perfect night. He had taken Illya to a bar and insisted on absinthe, and he had flirted, flirted shamelessly with Illya for two hours, before retiring to their shared hotel room. He had been so buzzing that Illya had needed to force him to sit down, take his shoes off with his own hands, dress him in his pyjamas and put him into bed.

Yes, Napoleon was wonderful, but Illya did also relish this peace, the swift swish of his skis and the slow whirl of snowflakes in the air, the creak of the trees and the soft  _ phut  _ of snow when it fell in piles from overloaded branches. Napoleon was the greatest extrovert in the world, and sometimes Illya needed to recharge, especially after spending days at close quarters with him in a tiny forest cabin.

He checked his heading again. It was perfect. He should be getting close to Dr Müller’s cabin now. He started to look more closely at the forest ahead. The cabin would probably be half-buried under snow, but he hoped he would see the dark of its walls; unless it was so buried that its walls were white too.

He muttered as he saw more wolf tracks crossing his path. More, and more again, criss-crossing the snow. Considering how much it had snowed lately they had to be relatively fresh.

He stopped suddenly, staring. Were those human footprints? Damn these skis. It was easy enough to go forwards but they weren’t exactly useful when one wanted to be agile. He kicked his boots free of the bindings and walked stealthily over towards the prints in the snow. Crouching, he examined the misshapen oval depressions. It was so hard to tell, but he thought they might be bootprints, distorted and half erased by the snowflakes that had fallen since they were made. There weren’t enough to be sure, only a few in this one spot where the ground was somewhat sheltered by a tangle of tree limbs bearing a thick canopy of snow.

One thing was certain: if these were human footprints, they were unlikely to be Dr Müller’s. Illya had seen photographs of the woman. She was a petite lady, and her feet matched her size. She could not have made these prints.

He stamped his feet back onto the skis, and pressed on, at the same time ripping off a glove with his teeth and assembling his communicator.

‘Open channel D,’ he said as he started to move again. ‘Napoleon?’

The reply was instant. ‘Illya. Are you at grandmother’s house yet?’

‘What?’ Illya asked, momentarily bewildered. Then he realised that April had probably told Napoleon about Little Red Riding Hood. ‘I haven’t reached Dr Müller’s yet. I’m close. I’ve come across what I think are a man’s footprints. I don’t like it. This area is supposed to be quite deserted.’

Napoleon’s voice instantly sharpened. ‘You want us to come out to meet you?’

Illya laughed shortly. ‘It would take you hours to catch me up, Napoleon. I’m carrying on, cautiously. I just wanted to make you aware.’

‘This makes me even more unhappy about you going off alone,  _ tovarisch _ ,’ Napoleon said seriously.

‘Yes,’ Illya admitted. ‘It makes me a little unhappy about it, too. Nevertheless, this is the situation I’m in, and I have little choice but to press on.’

‘I’ll have a hot toddy waiting for you when you get back,’ Napoleon promised.

‘You had better,’ Illya told him. ‘I’ll check in in half an hour, Napoleon, or when I reach Dr Müller’s. Whichever comes first.’

‘Illya, what’s your position?’ Napoleon asked cautiously.

Illya stopped moving, getting out his map and checking it. ‘I’m only a mile south of Dr Müller’s cabin,’ he told his partner. ‘I should be there very soon.’

‘Well, if it doesn’t snow too much we’ll just follow the trail of your skis to you,’ Napoleon said cheerfully. ‘I – uh – don’t suppose you have any breadcrumbs?’

‘I thought we were playing Little Red Riding Hood, not Hansel and Gretel?’ Illya asked.

Napoleon chuckled, and signed off.

Illya smiled as he capped his communicator and re-donned his glove, despite his unease over the footprints. Napoleon could always make him smile, and he valued that in this kind of situation like one would value a flickering candle in a dark room.

He skied on for some time, checking his position every few hundred yards. Then – Ah. There. He thought he saw something dark and solid up ahead; the wall of a house, maybe. The trees were thinner, and more light filtered down from the thickly clouded sky. Illya put more force into his movements, pushing forward swiftly until he broke out into a small clearing that was home to a house half-buried in snow. It didn’t look like your typical scientist’s lab, but then Dr Müller wasn’t your typical scientist, which was probably why she had chosen to live in such isolation in an Eastern European forest.

Illya sighed out his relief at reaching the place. The snow was thickening a little and more than once he had regretted his hasty choice to make the journey. But his sigh caught in his lungs as he noticed the open cabin door.

Cautiously, he kicked his feet free of his skis and leant them and the poles against a tree at the edge of the clearing. He continued on foot, snow crunching crisply under his boots. Everything was very, very quiet. There was no smoke rising from the chimney. He should have noticed that. It was possible the cabin was heated by something other than wood, but that looked awfully like a log pile half covered by snow against that wall.

Discreetly, he reached for his pistol, and moved closer to the cabin. The wolf prints in the snow did nothing to reassure him, and he was certain there were more bootprints mixed up in them.

There was no damage to the door, but it was open, and that just wasn’t right. A small drift of snow had covered the first few feet of the floor inside. Illya stepped through, gun in hand, alert for the smallest sign of movement. His breath clouded inside just as it did in the open air. He was standing in what must have been a very cosy living space, furnished with a deep sofa, a low table, and plenty of traditional fabrics. The cherry red curtains stood closed in the middle of the day. A small iron stove stood on the other side of the room, and Illya crossed to it, pulling his glove off. The metal was stone cold. Looking inside, he saw the remains of burnt out logs.

He turned back to the room, taking in every detail as he moved to the door on the other side. The half empty cup on the table. The disarrayed blanket on the sofa seat. The book splayed open face down. He stood still and listened. It was as quiet in here as it was outside.

He cracked open the inner door cautiously, standing just to one side and pushing it open with the barrel of his gun. Daylight flooded his eyes. This was the lab. Another door to outside stood wide open on the other side of the room. A small stab of pain, a scientist’s pain, hit him as his eyes passed over the broken test tubes, the smashed Petri dishes, and particularly the extremely fine microscope that had been hurled onto the floor. Dr Müller’s lab had been ruined, and Dr Müller was nowhere to be seen.

With a heavy heart, Illya took out his communicator and opened a channel.

‘Illya? You’re at the lab?’ Napoleon asked.

‘I am,’ Illya said succinctly, turning his back on the room and going swiftly back to investigate the one other door in the living room. It led to a narrow wooden staircase which took him to a cosy bedroom and a small bathroom. ‘Dr Müller is not,’ he added.

He could almost hear Napoleon’s gape. ‘She’s not?’

Illya stepped into the bedroom and gave a cursory look under the bed and into the tall rustic wardrobe.

‘She’s not,’ he confirmed. ‘Not a sign of her. Her laboratory has been trashed.’

‘Any signs of little birdies?’

‘Possibly some footprints outside. Also, more wolf tracks.’

‘Ah,’ Napoleon said, then, ‘Illya, be careful.’

‘I’m always careful. Napoleon, I’m putting the communicator in my pocket but I’ll leave the channel open. I’m going to poke about a bit more.’

‘All right, IK,’ Napoleon told him.

‘Did April keep the fire burning?’ Illya asked as he started going through the drawers by the bed. There was little in there beyond a few personal letters and receipts.

‘Very nicely,’ Napoleon replied with the slightly suggestive intonation he frequently used when referring to women.

‘And you brought her plenty of wood?’ Illya asked.

He heard Napoleon laugh through the little speaker.

‘Oh, yes, tovarisch. I brought a lot of wood,’ Napoleon said.

Illya was struck simultaneously with how far away Napoleon was in terms of giving necessary aid, and how uncomfortable he felt at Napoleon’s suggestive demeanour towards April. Was it because April was a friend? But she was a woman, and that was how Napoleon always dealt with women. Still, Napoleon using sexual innuendo in relation to her made him uncomfortable, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

‘Good,’ Illya murmured. Then he asked, ‘Are you out of breath, Napoleon?’

‘I’m trucking in the wood I cut and stacking it by the fire,’ Napoleon told him.

‘And talking to me at the same time?’

‘I’m nothing if not multi-talented,’ Napoleon replied, and Illya revised his earlier opinion. Napoleon didn’t just sound suggestive when he was referring to women. He sounded suggestive ninety percent of the time.

He moved out of the bedroom and into the tiny bathroom. The medicine cabinet was stocked with standard remedies, a few bandages, and what Illya thought was a prescription for high blood pressure, but that was all.

‘Found anything?’ Napoleon asked.

The voice startled Illya. He had almost forgotten he was still there.

‘Nothing yet. Some medicine for hypertension. Some personal letters.’

He stood there, lightly tapping the medicine bottle on the edge of the washbasin. Then he rummaged in his pockets for the little vial of bacteria.

‘Hey, buddy, tell me what you’re doing?’ Napoleon insisted.

‘Just searching,’ Illya said, preoccupied. He couldn’t be certain that there might not be someone listening. There could be bugs in the room. He also couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t in imminent danger of capture, and he couldn’t risk that sample being found on him.

He emptied the blood pressure pills out into his palm and dropped the vial into the brown glass bottle. Then he poured the pills back around it, shaking the bottle a little so that every sign of the vial was concealed. He washed the excess pills down the drain.

‘Illya, are you making use of the facilities?’ Napoleon asked suspiciously.

‘Just washing my hands,’ Illya murmured. He put the little brown bottle back in the medicine cabinet, and shut the mirrored door with a click. ‘I’m going to look around downstairs.’

He went back downstairs and spent a little time searching the small living room.

‘Nothing in the living area. I’m going to move on to the lab.’

He stepped back into the lab and started to go meticulously through the many slides and test tubes and Petri dishes. He opened slim drawers set under the benches, hoping for papers, but he found nothing.

‘Looks like the place was thoroughly ransacked,’ he said glumly to the microphone end of the communicator. ‘Dr Müller won’t be needing that sample after all.’

‘Will you be coming straight back?’ Napoleon asked, ‘or do you want us to come out there?’

‘I’m going to have more of a look around for Dr Müller first,’ Illya said. ‘There are a couple of outbuildings, something that might be an old outhouse.’

‘Just stay vigilant, all right?’ Napoleon’s voice said firmly. ‘You’re a long way from help.’

‘Don’t I know it?’ Illya murmured as he stepped out through the gaping back door.

His breath would have clouded into frozen droplets in the air again, except for the fact that it caught in his chest before he exhaled. Standing on the trodden snow of the back yard was a wolf.

‘Oh,’ he said after a moment.

Although he stood still for a very short part of a second, the scene burnt itself into his mind. The trampled snow of the back yard was streaked with crimson blood. He thought he saw something like entrails strewn on the snow where the clearing started to turn into forest again. And the wolf facing him was not a wolf, but a man.

Thick, dark grey trousers, a thick grey coat with flecked grey fur at the collar. And a mask. It had to be a mask. The wolf head had vicious, yellow white fangs, amber, glimmering eyes, and was soft with fur. Illya just stared for a moment, then his breath exhaled of its own accord, and for a brief second a white cloud hung in the air.

Then he ran. He could hear Napoleon’s voice emanating from his pocket, asking, ‘Illya, what is it? Who’s there?’

Who  _ was  _ there? How could he explain this as he ran? The wolf-man ran after him, feet crunching on the snow. Illya darted into the trees, made to raise his gun, realised he didn’t have time to aim. Then the wolves appeared; real, four footed wolves, clustering around the wolf-man in a pack, their tongues flopping long and pink and their breath misting in the air. Cold dread clouded through his body.

‘Illya?’ Napoleon shouted tinnily through the communicator, and he suddenly remembered the channel was still open. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Being chased,’ he panted out. ‘Wolves, and a man. Man with wolf head. He’s – ’

‘What?’ Napoleon asked, sounding utterly bewildered.

Illya took the chance of sending a few shots behind him.

‘It’s a man wearing a wolf head,’ Illya panted. ‘Some bizarre disguise. I – ’

Something grabbed at the fabric of his thick over-trousers and he fell face-first in the snow. The cold of it was an utter shock, but not as much as the sudden searing pain in his calf and shin. He rolled over, and looked up into long yellow fangs, shaggy grey fur, yellow eyes, pink tongues. Then he saw that grotesque character above them, the man in the wolf mask. He was raising his arm, and as pain exploded in Illya’s skull everything turned to black.


	2. Chapter 2

‘He said something about wolves,’ Napoleon said. ‘And a man in a mask. Then it went dead.’

He had dropped his load of cut wood outside. Never mind that it was tumbled all over the ground. They had enough wood inside to see them through the night, but right now he wasn’t sure if they’d even be here tonight.

April was pulling on her cold weather gear as he spoke, transforming from the elegant guest of a ski lodge to efficient agent without as much as a blink.

‘We’re going after him, aren’t we?’

Napoleon grinned. ‘Of course we’re going after him. See to it that the flasks are filled and shove a bit of food in the packs, won’t you?’

‘Do you think he – I mean, are there really wolves?’ April asked curiously.

Napoleon turned to look at her. She hadn’t sounded nervous, and there was no trace of nervousness in her voice. She just looked intrigued. She was a good agent.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said. ‘And a man in a mask? A wolf mask, he said. That wouldn’t surprise me either. Thrush never surprise me. They’re like a lunatic asylum’s reject pile.’

‘Illya – er – Well, he doesn’t like dogs much, does he?’ April asked then. She was busy pushing packets of biscuits into the bags.

Napoleon laughed briskly. ‘He controls it well, but yeah, he doesn’t like dogs much.’

‘He had a bad experience?’

‘He was a child in Kiev during the last war. Nazi occupied Kiev. Some of them used dogs to control the populace. They starved them so they’d be extra effective. They starved the people too.’

He spoke shortly, without looking at April. He always hated to think of what Illya had been through as a child in the war. It had been so different to his comfortable wartime in the continental United States. No wonder Illya was small. No wonder he always ate everything on his plate, and sometimes on other people’s plates besides. He had spoken about the rationing. In typical Illya fashion he had spoken more damningly about the way his Jewish compatriots were denied meat and milk and fruit. He had spoken as if his own diet had been luxury compared to that. Compared to that, Napoleon supposed that it was. But starvation had left a psychological dent in Illya, so much so that it was mentioned in his records. The dog phobia was something Illya had only ever disclosed to his partner. That would be a dangerous thing to have down in writing.

‘Come on,’ he said, giving his gun a last check and then hefting his pack onto his back. ‘Illya’s captured, almost certainly. We need to be fast.’

‘For the sample, as well as for him,’ April agreed.

Napoleon flashed a look at her again. She had such a delicate face, surrounded by the fur of her hood. She was a slim figure under all of the bulk of cold weather clothing. But she was a damn good agent.

  


((O))

  


Illya woke to cold and pain and fear. He was lying on his back, his arms and legs loose and limp on the floor. His lower leg hurt like hell, and the side of his head throbbed. He felt dizzy and dazed and nauseous, so he lay for a while with his eyes closed, just trying to judge his situation. The light was dim through his eyelids, but not dark. He was lying on a floor, he thought, that felt like concrete. He wasn’t wearing his thick winter clothes any more, and he felt very cold. The air smelt of damp – and of dog.

He moved a little, and a low, warning growl sounded. His heart skipped. He let himself go utterly limp, but he opened his eyes very slowly.

Above him, the ceiling was lost in the gloom. He could just make out an unlit bulb hanging from a flex that disappeared into the dark. He moved his eyes without moving his head.

The wolf was there, standing very close on his left, utterly rigid. There was another on his right, flanking him, mirroring the first. His heart skipped again, faltered, raced. He could feel the breath starting to catch in his throat. This was panic. He was letting himself succumb to panic.

‘Sit up,’ a voice said.

He tried to steady his breathing. He moved his eyes again, not his head, looking at the wolves left and right, trying to see where the voice had come from.

‘Sit up,’ the voice said again. It was a man, somewhere beyond his feet.

‘Call off the wolves,’ Illya said. His voice was shaking. He hadn’t meant for his fear to come through in his tone.

The man said something in another language, something that sounded close enough to Russian to feel familiar to Illya, but not close enough for him to understand. The wolves didn’t move back, but they both sat down.

‘Sit up,’ the man said again.

With the wolves either side of him apparently acting on command, the perils of disobeying might be worse than the risk of moving. Slowly, head swimming, Illya sat. The damage to his lower leg ached and burned as the muscles moved. He had no shoes, and his feet were freezing. He thought he could feel a bandage under his clothing, tight on his leg.

He saw he was wearing a loose, long sleeved vermilion red top and loose, soft trousers of the same colour, the kind worn by joggers. All the better to find him with if he escaped, no doubt. There was nothing natural of that colour and size in the forest. Anyway, how long would he survive in thin cotton clothes and with no shoes? How long would he survive with wolves on his trail?

‘ _ Кто вы _ ?’ he asked, curious as to whether this man spoke Russian.

He could barely see the man before him, half-silhouetted as he was by the light from the open door beyond him. He could make out dark clothes, dark shoes, and – there was that mask again. The man was wearing a wolf’s head.

‘Why the fancy dress?’ he asked.

The man’s arm jerked, and Illya flinched, but he had just tossed a packet wrapped up in greaseproof paper, which landed in his lap. He risked moving his arms to investigate.

‘Ah, dinner,’ he murmured, opening it up to see a couple of sandwiches. ‘Are you going to offer me a drink?’

This time a little flask landed, sloshing, by his thigh. He was tired and hungry after his trek through the snow, so he ate the sandwiches and drank freezing but rather musty tasting water from the flask. He would have welcomed more food, and something either stronger or hot to drink, but he wasn’t going to turn down this small offering.

As he ate he did his best to look around without making his scrutiny too obvious. There wasn’t much to see. This seemed to be a large room but the walls were lost in darkness. The floor was cold. The light outside the open door was too bright for him to be able to see what was out there. He didn’t think it was outside, because there was no draught.

‘Well, thank you,’ he said, holding out the greaseproof paper towards the silhouetted man. He didn’t make a move to take it. ‘Oh well, maybe the dogs will like it,’ he shrugged. He moved his hand the slightest bit towards the wolf on the right. Lips pulled back, jagged yellow teeth appeared, and the wolf growled. The sound sent horrors through him.

The silhouetted man stepped forward, bent to pick up the flask and the paper, and said briefly, ‘Lie down.’

‘You’re a man of few words,’ Illya murmured, but he lay down as ordered, watching the wolves on both sides of him warily as he moved.

The man spoke a word in that unknown language again, and both wolves immediately stood up again, resuming their guard positions. The man withdrew, and the door closed. A small amount of light filtered through a frosted window in the door.

Illya noted that he hadn’t heard any kind of lock or bolt fastening, but then, that was hardly needed. When he moved his head the slightest amount, the wolves growled. He closed his eyes, and at least he couldn’t see the animals then; but after a moment not being able to see them was worse than seeing them. He opened his eyes again, caught the glint of an eye, felt the hot breath. He very slowly started to clench his fist, and the wolves on both sides of him immediately growled.

He could feel his heart beating. It was hammering against the arch of his ribs, hammering down through his back into the cold floor. He had to stay still. He wanted to itch, to stretch, to look at the damage done to his leg or touch his hand to the bruise on his head. But anything more than a twitch of his finger set the wolves growling, and every time they growled his heart beat even faster and little shivers of fear ran through him from scalp to toes.

‘It’s all right,’ he murmured to himself, half trying to reassure himself, half testing the wolves. They didn’t growl or move. Perhaps a quiet, controlled voice was permitted. ‘ _ Все в порядке _ ,’ he said very quietly. ‘ _ Все в порядке. _ ’

He remembered his mother’s voice,  _ Все в порядке, Илюша. Все в порядке _ . He remembered her soft hand on his forehead, stroking sweaty hair back from his skin, then her lips touching where she had stroked. He had lain in bed whimpering from the nightmares. She had sat there for hours, it seemed, telling him how it was all right, how he was safe between the apartment walls, how everything was going to be fine. But when he had gone back to sleep again the dreams had been there, waiting for him. The dogs, starving and vicious, half feral, stalking the streets. The soldiers in their grey uniforms, barking in a language he didn’t understand. People were being taken away. People were being shot. His father was far away, fighting, and they had been left to the mercy of the men he was fighting against. They were taking away mothers and children and shooting them. They were holding back the food. They were letting loose their vicious, starving dogs and letting them tear people apart.

He slid his eyes left and right again. Muzzles, eyes, teeth. He tried to see them just as dogs. Just ordinary dogs. He saw plenty of dogs in his life. Little pomeranians being towed about by old ladies. Mongrels with kids in the park. Guard dogs, police dogs, attack dogs…

No. He reined his thoughts in again. He thought of those silly little lap dogs, yapping things. He thought of gentle labradors. But even lap dogs and labradors gave him an instantaneous chill when he saw them. He had to consciously push that aside before he could move on and act normally. He was very good at covering his fear. He was capable of holding a dog. He could pet a dog, or walk a dog; but there was always a part of his mind remembering those dogs in Kyiv, tearing people apart as they screamed, chasing people down, chasing him – him –

He had to catch his breath, try to steady himself. The scent of the wolves’ breath was no different from the scent of that dog in Kyiv, leaping to catch his sleeve, tearing, biting, tumbling him to the dirty ground. The scent was no different from the scent of that dog as its muzzle came down towards his neck, slavering, and then – There had been the bark in another language. A man in grey, with a metal hat and a gun, barking something at the dog that had been about to tear out his throat. He could see the need in its eyes. He could see the wild need. Those teeth just above his face, the lips drawn back to show hard red gums. He had wet himself right there on the ground, so afraid he could have died of fear without waiting for the teeth to tear him apart.

He couldn’t keep his eyes closed, couldn’t have them open. He lay there and stared at the space between the two wolves’ muzzles, up at the dim ceiling and the unlit bulb. His heart beat a tattoo against his ribs. He watched the pale little moon of the light bulb reflecting the light from the frosted window. It looked so real, so vivid, suddenly so low. The light bulb was the most real thing in the world. His heart was drumming so hard he could see his chest vibrating. A great red thing in his chest, alive, alive, beating so hard he knew his ribs were going to crack apart and his heart was going to explode out of his chest.

_Oh god oh god oh god oh..._

That taste in his mouth. That odd, musty taste. That had been in the water too. There had been something in the water. The floor was so real and hard and cold beneath him, so incredibly real and hard, stopping him from falling to the centre of the earth. The wolves’ muzzles. Those teeth were like jagged mountains. Oh god, there had been something in the water. He knew that feeling. He knew the feeling of drugs in the system.

He was breaking out in a sweat against the cold floor.  _ What big eyes you have. What big teeth… _ Those eyes were glittering up above him. The teeth were yellow, vicious, curving out of those red gums. He let out a long, low whimper of fear. He tried to keep his eyes on the pale globe of the light bulb, but the eyes were looking down at him. He was trying so hard not to move, but the anxiety and fear were building up in him, and he jerked suddenly, and both wolves instantly growled.

It was thunder. Thunder rolling and rolling through the room. The upright brush of the animals’ raised hackles was so stiff and sharp. You could cut yourself on that. If he even touched their fur he’d be cut to bits, like running his hands over broken glass. The breath was jerking and jerking in his lungs, going in and out with a sobbing noise, and the growling was so loud that he could see it rolling about the room, making the walls shake, making the light bulb shudder. The only steady thing was the cold floor under his shoulder blades and spine.

  


((O))

  


The snow was drifting down and the light was growing ever more dim. Napoleon stopped to check their bearings and found himself squinting at the compass to make out the exact angle of the needle. It was too light for the phosphorescent paint to glow clearly, too dark for the little notches to be easily seen.

‘We won’t have a problem finding the house, anyway,’ he said, and he wasn’t sure if he were trying to reassure April or himself. ‘That’s not a moving target.’

‘He won’t be in the house,’ April said. ‘They won’t have kept him there.’

Napoleon shrugged, although he knew the movement was probably invisible under his layers of clothing.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Probably not. But it’s where we have to start.’

He pushed the compass away and took hold of his poles again, and continued the smooth left-right of progress on his skis. There was something of Illya’s track still there, at least, and it was easier to cut through a path already broken. But he still kept checking the compass, just in case. Skis didn’t exactly leave personalised tracks and it was obvious they weren’t the only ones in this forest.

‘There,’ April said, pointing with one of her poles. ‘Look, paw prints. They're huge.’

Napoleon glanced at where she pointed. ‘Wolf tracks,’ he muttered.

They passed another tree, and he saw the bloody remains of some poor animal. There wasn’t much left beyond scraps of skin and patches of blood in the snow.

‘Wolf tracks,’ Napoleon murmured again. You didn’t have to have a dog phobia to feel a shiver at the thought of being out in a place like this with wolves roaming around. ‘Your gun’s accessible?’

‘Of course it is, darling,’ April replied, patting a hand to her side. 'It always is.'

‘Good,’ he said. ‘You shoot first, ask questions later, okay? They can move like dervishes. If it’s dog shaped, you shoot first.’

‘If it’s dog shaped, I will shoot first,’ April promised. She came alongside Napoleon and patted a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re worried about him, I know,’ she said. ‘But we’ll find him.’

‘I hope so,’ Napoleon said. ‘I really hope so.’

  


((O))

  


By the time the house was visible through the trees the light level was so low that Napoleon’s eyes were playing tricks on him. The thin veil of snow that kept falling blurred everything, and he felt as though he were groping through the gloom.

‘Take care,’ he murmured to April as they pushed out into the clearing.

‘Of course,  _ mon capitaine _ ,’ she replied, just as softly. ‘Shall we split?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Stay together. If I see movement I want to know it’s not a friendly.’

‘If it’s Illya?’ she asked.

‘It won’t be,’ he said.

He didn’t know how he was so certain, but he knew that Illya wasn’t here. Maybe agent’s intuition was a real thing. He didn’t think anyone was here. The place was so quiet he could almost hear the snow falling.

The inside of the house was freezing, abandoned, ransacked just as Illya had described. They had found Illya’s skis and poles lying at the edge of the clearing outside, but there was no other sign of him. He and April made a cursory search, but their priority now was finding Illya, not notes or clues to Dr Müller's fate. Illya had performed his own search.

They walked through the wrecked lab and out the back of the building into the trampled yard. The light was failing, but the dark stains on the snow were obvious enough.

‘Something’s been killed here,’ April said. Then she asked, ‘Illya?’

‘No,’ Napoleon said. No. These grisly remains couldn’t be Illya. He was sure it couldn’t be Illya. His heart was beating a little faster and there was nausea held tightly down in the base of his stomach, but he was sure this wasn’t Illya.

He got a flashlight from his pack and turned it on. The beam cut starkly over a mess of blood and offal that had been dragged all over the open space.

‘I think this was here before Illya called me,’ he said, crouching and touching his fingers lightly to the bloodstained snow. The blood was frozen solid.

April had got out her own torch.

‘These are his bootprints,’ she said. She was over near the side of the little clearing, and Napoleon joined her.

‘Here,’ she said, pointing. ‘I recognise the pattern, and the size. He was standing here, and then – ’

‘He ran,’ Napoleon said, crouching and looking at the prints. He slanted the beam of light after the footprints. The angle, the distance between them, the differing amounts of pressure put on heel and toe, all spoke of haste.

‘He was brought down here,’ April said, moving ahead. The snow was deeper here, and there was a clear mark showing that something large had been struggling in the snow. ‘And dog prints, too – or wolf. And different boots. And – ’

Napoleon had seen the blood too. It was much redder than the mess on the snow behind.

‘Okay,’ he murmured. It was possible the blood was from the animals, or the other person who had been here, but much more likely that it was Illya.

‘Look,’ April said, touching her gloved hand to a head-shaped dent in the snow. There was more blood there, and a few golden hairs.

‘So we know he’s got a head wound, and leg, I think, from the look of the marks,’ Napoleon murmured. He really felt very worried, but he didn’t want to show that to April. He squatted there, letting his torch highlight the blood. The messy dents in the snow carried on for a few yards and then stopped, as if Illya had been picked up and carried. Beyond that there were footprints, but there was also the occasional bright red splash of blood.

‘Well, maybe we are playing Hansel and Gretel after all,’ he murmured.

‘We follow the trail?’ April asked.

‘We follow the trail,’ Napoleon nodded. ‘Let’s go back and get our skis.’

  


((O))

  


It felt like hours. He must have been here for hours in this screaming, shivering hell. Time was a great stretching ribbon, aching and real and all around him. He had never felt anything so intensely. Every line in the room was so sharp he could feel it pressing into his skin. The floor was so hard. Those wolves were monstrous, gargantuan, looming over him, their teeth bared. When saliva dripped onto his face it felt like a deluge. He was drowning. God. Drowning in wolf juice. Oh god, oh god. He couldn’t move, but the cries were leaving him like air being slowly forced from an accordion. He didn’t dare to move. The more he thought about not moving the more the need built.

His arm jerked, jerked wholly against his will. Both wolves moved. Teeth in his arm. There were teeth in his forearm, clenching so hard that they must be crushing bone. Pain billowed up into his head, screaming and throbbing, a white explosion of pain, as the creature growled and shook him like a rag. He held the rest of his body motionless in terror and screamed and screamed.

A bark in that unknown language. The light had increased. It was so bright suddenly. A nuclear explosion, a mushroom cloud billowing on the ceiling above him. That was his pain up there, exploding over the ceiling, filling everything. He could see pipes and conduits in the ceiling, moving like worms, snakes, vines. They were growing and growing, squirming, pressing down towards him, and the teeth were pressing into his arm, splintering bone. He screamed until his throat was raw, and then carried on screaming.

The man barked again, sharper, and the wolf dropped him. His arm fell to the floor, and pain jarred through him. The shout echoed around the room long after the man had stopped speaking. He could see it hitting the walls, bouncing, rebounding, ricochetting through the air.

He lay there, shaking, staring at the moving pipes and the words flying in the air and those monstrous wolves. The pain went on and on. Blood was flowing hotly over his skin. He was dizzy with pain.

He tried to see the man. Dark clothes. That wolf head. God. That was part of him, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a mask. It was part of his body, seamless. He was a man with a wolf’s head, a monster.

‘Mr Kuryakin,’ the wolf-man said.

He panted, hands spread flat on the floor, his right forearm throbbing with pain.

‘Mr Kuryakin, calm yourself,’ the wolf-man said.

Every word he spoke floated from that wolf muzzle and wreathed around the room. Softer now. The words were softer. They weren’t pinging from the walls like bullets. They were moving as ribbons, little black ribbons that twisted and turned like strands of seaweed in a current. He was caught watching them, and he found himself a little calmer. His heart was still beating like a piston in his chest. His ribs ached. He watched those words moving.

‘The bacteria, Mr Kuryakin,’ the wolf-man said. ‘You know what they do, don’t you?’

He closed his eyes. The word  _ bacteria _ floated and expanded in his vision, orange and yellow and green like the spots on a Petri dish. It grew wider and thicker until all he could see was orange and yellow and green, blurring together, covering him, smothering him.

He snapped open his eyes again. Cold. Bright. He was lying in something cold and wet that was seeping down through his trousers and up through his top. There was a line under his spine that must be sweat. It was all so cold, and his arm hurt so much.

‘The bacteria,’ the wolf-man said again. ‘Mr Kuryakin, what do they do? What action does that strain of bacteria perform?’

He tried to take in breath. ‘The wheat,’ he said. His voice sounded like something far away from his own body and he tried to see his own words floating in the air, but he couldn’t see anything. ‘The wheat crop.’

‘What does that particular bacterium do to the wheat crop?’ the wolf-man asked gently.

He tried so hard to focus. ‘Kills the fungus,’ he said. He could feel the vibration of his voice like a hundred trucks moving over a bridge. If he spoke any louder the walls would crumble. The ceiling would fall in.

‘It kills the fungus, yes. What does the fungus do?’

Oh god, god… Those wolves were over him. Their breath was filling his lungs. He could see the glitter of their eyes.

‘Mr Kuryakin.’

‘The fungus,’ he said. He was so afraid. Every time he spoke it was like trying to push something solid into the air. ‘Grows in wheat. Subepidermal mycelium. Poisons.’

‘It poisons the wheat,’ the wolf-man said, as if he were teaching a small child. ‘And to those who eat the wheat?’

He struggled to make his words come out.

‘It – causes hallucinations, paranoia, internal bleeding...’

‘Yes, Mr Kuryakin. Where did you put the bacteria sample?’

He was crouching down, bringing that wolf face closer. Illya lay still, staring, trying so hard to contain the racing fear that was making his heart scream in his ears. God, god. Those teeth. He started back a little from the closeness of that face and the wolves either side of him growled. How long could his heart beat this hard? How long before it exploded under the strain?

‘Didn’t – I didn’t have it,’ he made himself say. ‘I didn’t have the sample.’

He could feel his heartbeat pushing through his arm. The blood must be spurting out.

‘Please, my arm – ’ he half sobbed.

‘Now, Mr Kuryakin, why would you make such a journey if you didn’t have the sample?’ the wolf-man asked him. ‘You know that with that sample we can construct an antidote to the fungus? Something that will end your torment early. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘I didn’t – I didn’t have it,’ he insisted. Then the fear overtook him and he said, ‘Oh god, please, please...’

‘Mr Kuryakin,’ the wolf-man said. ‘It’s as easy to keep you in this torment as it is to end it. Tell me where you put the bacteria sample.’

‘I – didn’t have it,’ he said. ‘Didn’t have it. Was trying to – ’ It was so hard to focus his mind when everything in the room was moving and twining and tearing, and his heart was so loud he couldn’t hear. ‘Was trying to persuade Dr Müller to come to our lab. Didn’t have – ’

‘You are lying, Mr Kuryakin,’ the wolf-man said. ‘I’m going to give you some time alone to think about the truth.’

He took a flask from his pocket and opened the lid. He put a hand behind Illya’s head and tilted it up a little. He could smell the musty scent. Water tipped over his lips and ran down his neck, so cold it made him gasp.

‘Now, Mr Kuryakin, if you don’t drink, the wolves will have to persuade you,’ he was told, so he opened his mouth and drank.

  


((O))

  


It was growing darker and darker and the brilliant drips of blood were growing smaller. A light scattering of snow was conspiring to cover both blood and footsteps, but the prints were deep enough that they’d last for a while yet. It was slow, frustrating work, though, following those tracks as they wound through the trees. In the light of the torches the rest of the forest darkened into an unseen, fairy tale world full of imagined threats.

‘What – ?’ Napoleon stuttered at an unearthly screech.

April nudged him gently and said, ‘Just an owl, city boy. Only an owl.’

The flutter of wings and the slight scatter of snow from a tree up ahead proved her right. Napoleon exhaled and grinned.

‘Just jittery, I guess. Don’t mind me.’

April swung her pack from her shoulders and crouched down and pulled out a pack of biscuits.

‘Here,’ she said, holding out a couple. ‘Ginger. We could do with a sugar boost.’

‘All right,’ he said, taking them awkwardly in his gloved hand. ‘But we move and eat.’

The biscuits were light and crumbling and sweet with ginger, but he hardly gave time to the taste. He just pushed both into his mouth together and forged on through the snow. The blood worried him. The dark worried him. Those paw prints and the carnage outside the house worried him. Illya was either outside and injured and at risk in the snow, or he was inside and injured and at the hands of some unknown enemy, probably Thrush. The falling snow made little blurred stars of white in the torchlight and every flake was smoothing out the trail they were following.

‘How far do you think they took him?’ April asked as they followed yet another detour around a fallen tree.

‘There’s no way of knowing,’ Napoleon said. ‘They could have  taken him out by dog sled, put him into a vehicle,  made him ski – ’

‘So we hope he’s local,’ April finished.

Napoleon sighed. His breath came out as a white cloud in the torchlight.

‘We hope he’s local.’

April laid a hand on his arm, and he slowed his pace for a moment.

‘I know you’re worried about him,’ she said. ‘I am too.’

‘Yeah,’ Napoleon said. For a moment he felt very angry. He was out here in the freezing cold and the dark on the track of his injured partner because Illya just couldn’t wait for back-up. ‘It’s so damn like Illya to charge off into the wilderness on his own like that. He should have waited for me to come back.’

‘Maybe then we’d all be captured,’ April pointed out rationally. ‘It could be they think he’s alone.  Anyway, he was too late. We should have all gotten there sooner. ’

‘Yeah,’ he said. He rubbed a gloved hand over his face, and shivered because all he was doing was rubbing snow onto his skin. ‘Yeah, I know. He shouldn’t have gone off, but he knew the risks. Come on. We’d better get on. It’s only going to get darker.’

They turned their lights back to the tracks and carried on through the snow. There was nothing easy about this trail, winding as it was between trees, up and down little variations in ground level, over frozen streams. The night grew to the point where there was nothing but the light from the torches, and the falling snow caught and obscured the beams before they could shine very far.

‘Look,’ April said then, pointing ahead.

‘ L ights off,’ Napoleon said instantly, because he’d seen what she had seen; a glimmering light somewhere ahead. It was dim through the snow, but it was really there.

‘You think that’s it?’

‘The tracks lead that way,’ Napoleon said.

He bit his lip under the muffler that covered his lower face. They couldn’t follow the tracks without light. They couldn’t walk through this forest without light. One or the other of them would break an ankle. But if they could see the light through the snow there was a chance that their own lights would be seen.

‘Keep your light off,’ he told April. ‘We’ll have to risk one, but not both. We’ll leave the skis here. If we find Illya he won’t have skis anyway, and might not be in a fit state to use them.’


	3. Chapter 3

Illya was so cold. It was so cold in this room. He shook with the cold, and those wolves stood over him, looking down at him with steady, glittering eyes. He could feel the ice. There was ice creeping over everything. Dying in a world of ice. The only hot things were the wolves on either side of him, steady on either side of him, their hot mouths and their vicious teeth. His heart was beating so hard that it hurt. His throat was like sand. His breath rasped.

The light exploded into his eyes. For a moment he couldn’t see. Then the wolves’ jaws formed themselves again, the teeth came into being, the eyes appeared.

‘Stand up,’ the voice said.

He blinked and tried to see the person speaking. It was the same voice as before, the wolf-man, the tormentor who came in and asked him questions he couldn’t answer.

He drew in breath and tried to steady his voice.

‘Call off the wolves,’ he said.

There was that bark in another language. The wolves lay down. They were so close, though. He was a boat in a narrow channel, those wolves on either side of him, their muzzles so close to his arms, his agonised right arm, his left arm twitching in his fear. He could see the wolf-man there, in his grey clothes, his wolf head there staring down at him. This time, though, he could see that it was a mask. It was no longer a grotesque combination of man and beast. It was an intricate, incredible mask; but a mask all the same.

‘Stand up,’ the man said.

He didn’t want to stand up. He felt dizzy even lying down. His head ached as if it were splitting apart. He felt himself trying to bring that into being, caught his mind starting to imagine his head bursting open like a flower coming out of a bud. It wasn’t real. He knew it wasn’t real. But the man had the flask in his hand and there would be more of that drug in the water, and he would plunge again into the depths of hallucination and paranoia. The paranoia was there, itching at him, teasing at his mind.

‘Stand up!’ the man barked, and the wolves growled.

Slowly, he stood. He pressed his cold hand on the cold floor and pushed himself up. His leg seared. The world spun dizzily around him. He stood there, wavering, his clothes wet and heavy on the back of him. The wolves were watching him from their positions on the floor, watching every movement with a coiled intensity that sent terror racing through him. Whenever he looked at those wolves he was no more than a nine year old boy, terrified by a slavering dog that was as big as he was.

‘Where did you put the sample, Mr Kuryakin?’ the man asked.

Illya raised his eyes slowly, wary of any swift movements. The man was taller than him, and the mask made him taller still. He tried to hold onto the knowledge that he was an adult man now, but he knew he was no less at risk than the boy he had been.

‘I – didn’t – have – any – sample,’ he said slowly and deliberately.

He felt so tired, so hungry. He had no idea what time of day or night it was or how long he had been lying in this place.

The man held out the flask. ‘Take a drink, Mr Kuryakin.’

He didn’t move. He didn’t want to drink the water.

‘Mr Kuryakin,’ he said warningly, and both wolves sat up, their ears pricked, their eyes riveted on their prey.

His heart was thudding. He felt so dizzy.

‘No,’ he said.

The man gave another command to the wolves, and they stood, their lips peeling back, their teeth baring with deep growls. The fear was so strong that it pulsed through every cell of his body. The need to scream was thick inside him, pressing to get out. He took a step back. He couldn’t help it. He stepped back, and the wolves stepped after him, and then he was running, running, not even making for the door, but just trying to outrun those terrible animals.

He had no strength. He could hardly see. He ran blindly into a wall and fell back, and the wolves were leaping at him, claws tearing at him, bowling him to the ground. It hurt so much. He drew his arms up over his face and curled into a ball, and the wolves were snarling and growling and tearing at him, and he screamed and begged and screamed.

Abruptly they stopped. They had been ordered to stop. There were hands on him, pulling him to his feet, jerking him back across the room. The neck of the flask was against his mouth, and he drank the water, desperate to drink the water if that meant the wolves wouldn’t be allowed to touch him.

‘Where is the sample?’ the man asked.

He was shaking so hard. Blood was running down his arms. His clothes were soaked with urine and sweat.

‘The wolves haven’t eaten for a long time, Mr Kuryakin,’ the man told him. ‘They’re wild animals. They’re very well trained, but they’re wild animals. I can only hold them back for so long.’

There was screaming in his ears. He tried to breathe but every breath was a jerk and it seemed as if no air was getting into his lungs.

‘I – don’t – ’ he said.

His lips were tingling and half numb. He was dizzy, so dizzy. He was going to vomit. His stomach was lurching deep down inside him, and he was dizzy, he couldn’t see, and –

He was aware of nausea and dizziness and pain. He was lying on the floor, and his head was throbbing, his hip hurt, his side hurt. His stomach lurched and watery vomit spilled out over the concrete. The growling of the wolves was an insistent, constant thing, not far from his ears, like the deep buzzing of bees. He thought of bees. He thought of bees swarming, crawling over him in a mass, and he had to fight not to let that thought make itself into reality.

‘Where is the sample, Mr Kuryakin?’ the man asked.

He blinked. He could see the man’s knees. He was crouching near him.

He let himself fall back so he was lying flat on his back again. The man touched the flask to his mouth, and he drank again. He tried to focus his eyes, tried to focus on his surroundings. That wall he had run into; that had been metal, he was sure. No wonder this place was so cold. And the door with the light coming through it. There must be another room or a corridor outside. He had to get out through that door. He had to escape that man and the wolves before they killed him.

But he couldn’t move. How could he move with those animals constantly guarding him? He had to. He had to get out before they killed him. He pushed his palms against the cold floor and pain skewered through his arm, and as he rose a little the wolves growled.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ the man told him. ‘They’re trained to kill. If I want them to bring you down they go for the arm or the leg. If I want them to kill you, they tear out your lovely, soft throat.’

The man was silent for a little time, letting that sink in. It sank so deep that Illya was dizzy with the fear of it.

‘Now, where is the sample, Mr Kuryakin?’

It would be so easy to tell him. But he remembered his mother telling him about the famine that had swept the land just before his birth. He remembered that drawn, haunted looked on her face whenever she had spoken of it; always quietly, always with such an air of secrecy that he knew never to speak of it himself. He could see in his mind those great fields of grain that fed hungry mouths. But he wanted to tell the man where the sample was. He wanted to spare himself the crushing, shuddering fear that he knew was going to surge through his body even more strongly once this last dose of the hallucinogen had been absorbed into his bloodstream.

‘I – didn’t have it,’ he said. He closed his eyes. Tears were cold on his cheeks. ‘I didn’t have the sample.’

‘My patience may not outlast the night, and neither may you,’ the man warned him. ‘Now, where is – ’

The man crumpled. Abruptly he was lying on the floor, inert. One of the wolves had jumped up, startled as the man’s limp body fell towards it. Both were growling, and Illya’s breath jerked in his lungs as he fought to hold himself still. This time he heard the little sputs of silenced guns, simultaneous shots, and one of the wolves collapsed. The other jumped and snarled and whimpered and it was coming at him, coming for him, when another shot brought it down. He lay there, panting, shivering, the wolf’s muzzle so close to his face, its tongue lolling onto the ground.

Hands. There were hands on him, someone so muffled in winter clothes he couldn’t see their face.

‘Illya. Illya. Come on now.’

He stared up at the little snatch of skin he could see. He could see eyes. Dark eyes, a glimpse of dark hair. That was April. He knew it was April, but he was afraid. He felt so afraid. What if it were a trick? What if they’d sent someone in who looked like April and sounded like April to trick him?

That stuff was taking hold of him again. He had drunk the water, and he could feel it starting through him again, bringing him back to a place where everything felt so unbearably real and terrifying. He lay and stared into those eyes and the fur surround of her hood, and he saw wolf fur and wolf eyes, and suddenly he was terrified.

‘Napoleon,’ she said, and her voice was bells clanging against his mind. Everything smelt of blood. ‘Napoleon!’ she said again.

He risked movement, trying to shuffle backwards on the floor. Those other wolves were dead, slumped, bleeding out. He saw a standing figure holding something in its hands, holding the great head of a wolf in his hands. He must have torn the whole head from its body. The man dropped it to the floor and he watched everything ripple. Everything was spreading out in great ripples. The ground was moving, the air was moving, the man was coming closer, swaddled in thick clothes, and he screamed and tried to push himself back. They were going to kill him! It was all a trick, all a trick to get the sample from him and kill him and let the wolves rip him apart.

He tried to get himself up, tried to stand. The floor was rippling and moving and the walls were peeling back and those people were moving towards him, trying to get him, and – Something stung in his chest, and then he was gone.

  


((O))

  


‘Christ,’ Napoleon muttered.

He slipped the tranquilliser clip out of his gun again and put the clip of real bullets back in. Illya had been shouting and screaming incoherently, slipping and stumbling as he tried to stand, his pupils blown to pools of black. It was awful to have to put him to sleep, but it was also a relief.

April was kneeling by him, touching her fingers to his neck.

‘Pulse is very fast, but it’s slowing,’ she murmured. ‘They’ve given him something. Some kind of drug.’ Her nose wrinkled. ‘I think we should – er – Well, we should try to get him some clean clothes before we take him anywhere. He’s wet through.’

‘We need to get out of here as soon as possible,’ Napoleon said, looking over his shoulder towards the door. He had no idea if there might be other people here. This had been almost the first room they had looked into in the building.

‘We should search through, take out any other hostiles,’ April replied. She was just resting her hand on Illya’s neck now. ‘If we leave without neutralising them they’ll be able to follow.’

Napoleon huffed out breath. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said. ‘But we need to get Illya somewhere safe.’

‘Put him in the closet out in the hall,’ April said with a shrug. Napoleon could see just enough of her face to see that she was smiling. ‘He’ll be at home with the other mop tops.’

‘I guess he will,’ Napoleon nodded, returning the smile. He turned back to the other body and the wolf mask on the floor. ‘No wonder he was freaking out like that,’ he said, picking up the mask and turning it in his hands. It was an incredible thing, intricately made with what looked like real wolf fur and real teeth. Spaced out as he seemed to be on drugs, Illya would have been terrified.

He placed the mask back on the floor. He recognised the face of the man lying beside it, but he didn’t know his name. He’d seen him pictured in briefings as an unknown Eastern European member of Thrush. Whoever he was, he was out of it now.

‘Come on,’ he said, stepping over to Illya. ‘Let’s get him into that closet.’

He winced as he bent to pick Illya up. The torn red clothes were caked with blood on both the right arm and right leg. He hardly wanted to look underneath to see how bad the damage was, but he would have to, later. Right now they needed to do as April had suggested, and take out any other hostiles in the area.

‘ All right,’ April murmured, moving towards the door. ‘I’m covering you.’

He trusted her completely, concentrating entirely on Illya’s limp bulk as he carried him out of the brightly lit room and into the corridor. April slipped ahead of him, keeping her gaze moving from one end of the corridor and opening the closet door with her free hand. He put Illya down as gently as possible in the cramped space, and closed the door.

‘ Okay,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Let’s get the rest of this place secured.’

It was a small complex; just a few rooms other than the large storage room where Illya had been kept, all branching off the main corridor. They had seen a large locked pen outside containing four of the wolves, and Illya’s room had been the first they had come across once they were inside.

The first door Napoleon opened revealed a dark room. A flash of his torch showed a few cot beds and some possessions scattered around, but no one was in there. The second room held some basic kitchen equipment, a table, and boxes of stores. The third held lab equipment. The fourth was a storeroom. The fifth, at the other end of the building, had a little line of light showing under the door. He held a finger to his lips and stepped forwards very softly. He and April separated themselves and stood on either side, then he reached sideways and opened the door forcefully. They were both aiming their guns into the room when the three men around the card table turned. It only took one of them reaching for a weapon for Napoleon to feel justified in shooting to kill. He and April dropped the three of them within seconds.

April flashed him a smile, and he grinned in return.

‘ Good work,’ he said.

A small pool of blood was spreading over the table from the man he had shot through the head. He wondered if he could conjure any remorse, but there was none there. These three had been sitting, unconcerned and playing cards, while the sound of Illya’s screaming echoed down the corridor. That sound must have been going on all night. Any pity he might have felt was shut down by that thought.

‘ You think that’s all of them?’ April asked.

‘ There’s one more door,’ Napoleon said, nodding to a narrow door on the other side of the corridor. ‘But it’s dark in there, I think.’

They crept closer to the door, and Napoleon turned the handle. It was locked.

‘ Here,’ April said, holding out a little explosive tab.

Napoleon pushed it into the lock and activated it. White light flared and then died. The door swung open.

It was another closet, larger than the first. On the floor lay a woman, huddled in a heap of blankets, asleep.

‘ Dr Müller!’ April exclaimed.

Napoleon hissed out his amazement through his teeth. ‘So that wasn’t her killed in the back yard. I wonder – ’

April was crouching down. She put her hand to the woman’s shoulder and gently shook it. She came awake with a start, looking terrified, clutching the blankets to her chin. She was small and stout, her short grey hair ruffled and dirty looking, and there was a bruise on her face.

‘ Dr Müller,’ April said softly. ‘Dr Müller, it’s all right. We’re from U.N.C.L.E.. The men who captured you are dead.’

The woman started to cry.

Napoleon looked out into the corridor, then back at the distraught woman on the floor. April was gently trying to soothe her while she gave forth a jumbled stream of sobbing German words.

‘ We’ve cleared the whole place,’ Napoleon said. ‘Listen, if you can get her to calm down, have a look for some warm clothes for him, and for her. I’ll go get Illya and bring him to that kitchen room, then I’ll look for medical equipment.’

She nodded, then turned back to the woman and spoke to her softly again. Her sobbing was slowly becoming quieter. Napoleon patted a hand on her arm, then turned around to hurry back down the corridor.

Illya was still slumped on the floor of the closet at the other end, his face pale under dirt and tear tracks and dried blood. Napoleon hauled him out and carried him down to the kitchen room, where he swept aside dirty plates and containers and laid his partner out on the table. It wasn’t warm in this room, but it wasn’t so cold that Napoleon hesitated in stripping off his partner’s torn and wet clothing, wrinkling his nose at the urine scent as he threw the soft jogging clothes aside. Illya had been clean and healthy when Napoleon had walked out of the house in the woods to fetch wood the previous morning. Now it was the early hours of the next day, and his partner was unconscious, skin torn and bloodied from the wolves’ teeth, and his forehead bruised and split. There were blood soaked bandages on his leg and his right arm, and Napoleon hated to think what he would find underneath. And now Illya had a new bruise to add to the total; a blooming bruise on his chest around the little puncture wound from the tranquilliser bullet Napoleon had been forced to shoot him with.

He suppressed his guilt at that and turned to the cupboards around the room. There was a small stock of medical supplies in one; some painkillers, bandages and other dressings, and antiseptic fluid. He pulled out the whole lot onto the counter, then ran some water and found a cloth to start wiping away the blood from the angry wounds on Illya’s arms and legs.

He was unwrapping the blood sodden bandage from Illya’s arm as April came into the room, with her arms full of clothing. The doctor was following behind her, looking shocked but much more self contained. She was carrying her own bundle of winter-wear in her arms.

‘ I found his clothes and boots in a corner,’ April said. ‘Pants were badly ripped, though, so I purloined another pair. Guy who owned them won’t be needing them any more.’

Napoleon smiled at her prosaic tone. ‘Dr Müller, are you all right?’ he asked gently then, as the woman came a little further into the room.

‘ I am all right,’ she said, in unsteady, accented English. ‘I am a little – How is it you say? I am shaken up. But I am all right.’

‘ Do you feel up to a trek through the snow?’ he asked.

The woman blinked, looking as though she were parsing his sentence in her head. If only Illya were conscious. He and April both spoke German well enough, but Illya was fluent.

‘ A walk?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I can walk. But how about this young man?’ she asked, looking towards Illya’s body on the table.

‘ This is my partner,’ Napoleon said crisply. ‘He’ll come round in a few hours. I – er – I don’t suppose you have medical training?’

She smiled ruefully. ‘No, I am afraid my training is only in chemistry,’ she told him. ‘The wolves. He has been attacked, yes?’

‘ They were using them to threaten him,’ Napoleon nodded.

The woman was looking at Illya with a haunted expression. ‘My man Hans,’ she said. ‘He came every week to cut wood. He was there when they came...’

She trailed off, and Napoleon understood what the remains in her back yard were now.

‘ I’m sorry,’ he said softly, touching her arm. Then he turned back to April. ‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, lifting Illya’s right arm tenderly and palpating the skin. His flesh had been ripped deeply by the wolves’ teeth, and it was mottled with dark clouds of bruising. ‘I think it might be broken.’

‘If he was savaged by a wolf, almost certainly ,’ April said, coming to look. There was tender concern in her eyes.  ‘ Arm, leg, head, hip, shoulder,’ she murmured. ‘Is that it?’

Carefully, Napoleon rolled his partner’s inert body onto his side.

‘ Yeah, pretty much,’ he nodded. ‘That bite there carries onto the back of his shoulder, but that’s it.’ He sighed. ‘We’ll do what we can,’ he said. ‘Then we need to get him out of here.’

‘ Back to our borrowed accommodation?’ April asked.

‘ First back to Dr Müller’s,’ Napoleon said, favouring the woman with a smile as she looked up at her name. ‘Illya left the bacteria sample somewhere there. He must have. That guy was asking him where it was when I shot him.’

‘ Okay,’ April nodded. She was pouring out antiseptic fluid onto a pad and gently swabbing Illya’s wounds. ‘Back to Dr Müller’s. What about those wolves?’ she asked. ‘If we leave them locked in that cage with no one to tend to them, they’ll starve.’

‘ Let them,’ Napoleon said in a steely voice. He felt no pity for them at all.

‘ We can at least shoot them,’ April said softly.

He raised his eyes to her face. Perhaps this was what he was missing at times. Sometimes it was all to easy to turn his back on compassion, when the forces they were up against were constantly showing them how easy it was to be cruel.

‘ I’ll shoot them,’ he said. ‘Get those wounds dressed, and I’ll come back in and help you get some clothes on him.’

  


((O))

  


Struggling back to consciousness was like surfacing from a deep pool. It was like emerging from a cave. It was like nothing at all. His thoughts wouldn’t work properly. He felt so deep down, so blind and deaf, but he knew that he was here. He could feel something soft beneath him, and he could feel pain.

He started to come closer, and the fear began to creep in. There was so much pain, so much stinging and aching in his arm and his leg. His head throbbed. He wasn’t cold, but there was so much pain. The bed – it was a bed, wasn’t it? – was rocking, spinning, sailing around and around. His body was rocking and spinning, growing and dwindling. He could hear voices, and the fear spiked. This was how they would do it, then. They would make him believe he was safe, and they’d get what they needed.

He didn’t want to open his eyes. He held them tightly closed and tried to pretend that the bed wasn’t spinning and he wasn’t at the mercy of people who wanted to kill him.

‘ Illya. Illya.’

That voice said his name, said it again and again and again. A low, masculine voice, using his name over and over. That was their new trick, was it? No more  _ Mr Kuryakin _ . Just  _ Illya, Illya _ , trying to make them believe he was safe.

‘ Hey, Illya,’ another voice said, a woman this time. Using a woman was the oldest trick of all.

He shook his head from left to right, trying to get those voices to go away.

‘ Okay, so he’s awake,’ the man said. ‘Shall we give him this?’

Then – oh god – the cold rim of a vessel at his lips, an odd tasting liquid being poured against his lips.

He flailed then, hitting out with an arm that seared with pain. There was a clatter, a crash and a splash.

‘ Christ, Illya, it’s  something to make you better ,’ that man’s voice said. Napoleon’s voice. Wasn’t it – Wasn’t that Napoleon’s voice?

He blinked then, letting some light come into his eyes. He could see a ceiling above him, plastered in white with brown beams cutting across it.

‘ Come on, now, Illya, drink a little,’ the woman said.

He turned his aching head sideways. His head ached, his neck ached, his arm and leg were on fire. That was April, wasn’t it? She was sitting by his bed, smiling at him, holding a cup. But wasn’t it a trick? Surely it must be a trick. There was a solid ache above his heart. Napoleon had shot him, hadn’t he? Napoleon had fired his gun straight at his chest.

‘ No,’ he murmured. ‘No, no, no – ’

It must be a trick. Perhaps there were more masks. He stared at April, at her brown eyes and dark hair, and he started to see fur, to see the deadly glitter, to see her mouth morphing into the shape of a muzzle.

‘ No!’ he cried out, the fear ballooning inside him. ‘God, no, no – ’

‘ Paranoid,’ he heard one of them say. He couldn’t tell who was speaking any more. ‘Effects of … paranoia … won’t be able to …’

‘ Use it for … make ...’

There was silence for a long time. Then there was something touching his temple, something cold and hard, small and hard. How often had he experienced that feeling, the feeling of cold metal being pressed to his temple. It was the muzzle of a gun.

‘ Drink it,’ Napoleon said, and his voice was harsh. ‘Drink it or I’ll blast your brains out.’

His breath caught in his chest.

‘ Drink, or I’ll bring in the wolves,’ Napoleon said.

Everything was collapsing and dwindling around him. The fear was exploding into the only thing that existed. He felt cold at his lips again, and he opened his mouth and drank.

  


((O))

  


‘ Well, Little Red Riding Hood,’ Napoleon said.

He blinked, turning his head. The bed was still beneath him. He was warm and the bed was soft, and oh, he hurt so much.

‘ Napoleon?’ he asked.

Napoleon was there by the bed, sitting on a wooden chair, smiling.

‘ The one and only, partner mine. How do you feel?’

‘ Terrible,’ Illya murmured.

‘ Well, I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any painkiller  other than aspirin, so you’ll have to wait a while for anything stronger. Illya, do you know where you are? Do you know what’s been going on?’

He exhaled slowly. God, everything hurt so much. He tried to focus on the ceiling, tried to put it together in his mind with past experience. But everything hurt, so many different kinds of hurt all coming together so that his entire body was a sea of pain. His right arm was in a sling across his chest, and it was like a bar of pain across him.

‘ Am I – Am I in Dr Müller’s place?’ he asked.

‘ You are in Dr Müller’s place,’ Napoleon nodded. ‘And while you’ve been emulating Sleeping Beauty, April and I have been acting out Cinderella, working like navvies to put the place back in order.’

He blinked. ‘But Dr Müller – ’

‘ Is alive,’ Napoleon told him. ‘She was at the same place where they had you. Luckily they also had a little fleet of Ski-Doos, which made the return journey much easier than I’d expected it to be, considering you were unconscious at the time.’

‘ Because you shot me,’ Illya pointed out.  He wanted to sound reproving, but he couldn’t manage to put that much strength in his voice.

‘ Because you were sky high on a condensed form of that fungus,’ Napoleon returned, ‘and you were screaming about me trying to kill you.’

‘ Oh,’ Illya replied. He lay there for a moment, just looking up at the ceiling. ‘But – I don’t feel it now.’

‘ Well, that’s thanks to Dr Müller,’ Napoleon told him. ‘When we brought her back here she was quite shaken. First thing she did was go after her blood pressure medicine; and she found the sample inside. Now, she’s not a medical doctor but she’s an intelligent woman, and she managed to make enough of a solution with some of those bacteria in it to knock out the drug in your system.’

Illya stiffened at that, and Napoleon said, ‘Don’t worry. There’s enough left. She’s culturing it as we speak.’

He rested back into the pillows again, allowing himself to feel a slow blooming of relief that the doctor and the bacteria sample had been united, and the threat to the crops of Eastern Europe was going to be destroyed.

The memory of the wolves suddenly flooded over him. He could feel his heart starting to race, feel its beat in his temples, adrenaline surging through his body. This was a very small house in a very large forest...

‘ Hey,’ Napoleon said, laying a hand very lightly on his shoulder. That light touch reminded him of the sore bites beneath, and he winced.

‘ I shot them,’ Napoleon said. ‘I shot both of those wolves when I found you, and I killed the others before we left. They were trained to kill. It was the only thing I could do.’

‘ Thank you,’ Illya said.

All the thin veneer of banter was gone, and he was looking straight into Napoleon’s eyes, straight into his thoughts. Napoleon must know how terrified he had been. He had thought he would die from terror alone.

‘ Illya, I know you don’t want this on your U.N.C.L.E. record,’ Napoleon said softly, ‘but I know a very good man in Queens, very discreet. Nothing you say to him will get back to anyone. It might help, after your experience, to give him a call.’

Illya smiled. ‘And no one will ever know my Achilles heel?’ he asked. He shook his head. ‘I can’t risk it, Napoleon. If Thrush ever discovered that phobia – any of our phobias – they would use it without mercy.’

‘ Like they did this time?’

‘ They didn’t  _ know _ ,’ Illya insisted angrily. ‘They fed me something to increase paranoia and they used those wolves to control me. They would have done that no matter who they’d caught. They didn’t  _ know _ .’

He felt shaken suddenly, near to tears. What had happened at that facility was a terrible, tangled blur, but the fear had carried through, clear as crystal.

‘ Then you might need to speak to the U.N.C.L.E. psychiatrists about it,’ Napoleon said then, and his voice was very serious. ‘Illya, as your partner, and as your immediate superior, you  _ do _ need to speak to someone about it. You need to get it under control.’

‘ It  _ is _ under control,’ Illya insisted. ‘When have I ever,  _ ever _ backed out of a situation because of a dog? Anyone would have been terrified in that place, wolves standing over you waiting to rip you apart!’

‘ All right,’ Napoleon said gently. ‘All right. Yes, you always have it under control, when it’s within your means to control it. But – just think about it, won’t you, Illya?’

Illya closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered that dark, cold room and the wolves either side of him, on guard, just waiting for the command to tear into him. He remembered that street in Kyiv, and the dog barrelling down on him, knocking him to the ground, snarling and tearing at his arm…

He opened his eyes again and looked into the light, warm room.

‘ I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll have nightmares for a while. I’ll spend time in the park watching people play with yapping little rats. I’ll move on up to larger dogs. Maybe I’ll pet some of them, or throw a ball. I know how to deal with it. I’ll be off missions for a while anyway, won’t I?’

Napoleon smiled ruefully. ‘For a while, I think,’ he said. ‘They mauled you pretty badly. I’m sure your right arm is broken.’

Illya brightened a little at that. ‘Well, in that case I won’t even be able to type.’

‘I’ve called for support, and as soon as we’ve got a couple of men in place to guard Dr Müller we can get you out of here. It might not be fun on a Ski-Doo but we can get you close enough to a road to transfer to something more comfortable, and get you to hospital. Better painkillers, antibiotics, and pretty nurses. You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’ve got very severe bites. You’re going to need some re-constructive surgery, I think. A lot of stitches. Time to heal.’

‘Time to heal,’ he murmured. He let his eyes move about this quaint little bedroom. It looked like it was from a fairy tale. But fairy tales contained such dangerous things. Wickedness. Wolves. Fear.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t live all the way out here for anything in the world. Give me skyscrapers and taxicabs and a city that never sleeps. At least there aren’t wolves.’


End file.
